The Implications of Literacy: Written Language & Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh & Twelfth Centuries

by Brian Stock

This book explores the influence of literacy on eleventh and twelfth-century life and though on social organization, on the criticism of ritual and symbol, on the rise of empirical attitudes, on the relationship between language and reality, and on the broad interaction between ideas and society.

Medieval and early modern literacy, Brian Stock argues, did not simply supersede oral discourse but created a new type of interdependence between the oral and the written. If, on the surface, medieval culture was largely oral, texts nonetheless emerged as a reference system both for everyday activities and for giving shape to larger vehicles of interpretation. Even when texts were not actually present, people often acted and behaved as if they were.

The book uses methods derived from anthropology, from literary theory, and from historical research, and is divided into five chapters. The first treats the growth and shape of medieval literacy itself. Theo other four look afresh at some of the period's major issues--heresy, reform, the Eucharistic controversy, the thought of Anselm, Abelard, and St. Bernard, together with the interpretation of contemporary experience--in the light of literacy's development. The study concludes that written language was the chief integrating instrument for diverse cultural achievements.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Academic, Medieval History, Medieval, Philosophy

616 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Guido Eekhaut · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting history of the implications or (rising) literacy in Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the consequences in religious practice (including heresies). Shows that many so-caled heretics nearly a thousand years ago already had very 'modern' ideas about the foundations (or lack of) of christianity.

[Victoria · Rating 2 out of 5]

The "rebirth" of literacy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries changed the way people interacted with ideas -- shift from an oral culture to a textual culture, in which knowledge was not only recorded in writing but writing was in itself a form of knowledge. Created a new distinction between literate and illiterate peoples, which in turn created a divide between literate elite culture and illiterate popular culture (which I believe to be a false dichotomy, draws an artificial barrier where none existed in practice). Intensely boring, and not as convincing as Carruthers.

[Dan Yingst]

a good book, marred by a hard to describe style which makes reading a bit of a slog.